About Jenesis Mercedes

“When you do something from the heart, you don’t need a title” -Jenesis M.

I was born in Brooklyn, NY but was raised in Dominican Republic. While in High School I fell in love with reading. I Fell in love with Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice and Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. And to this day these two still are on my top list of favorites. And as I was discovering a whole new world through books, I kept getting the one question many get asked by their parents as they grow up. “What do you want to study after you graduate?” and honestly the more I thought about it the less I knew. Naturally the comments of choosing a career that would “make me good money” were always so present, yet I did not want to make money if I was going to hate my job.

I have always been a creative person, so naturally most of my decisions were inclined to that department. After I graduated High School I moved to NY and started college with the same indecision, always switching majors in my head to make sure I chose the right one when the time came. Then I took my first marketing and psychology classes and that was it, that is what I wanted to do. Learning I could have the ability to connect with people and identify the trends and decision making behaviors was fascinating to me and I later came to find out that I was GREAT at it.

However, life happened and I got pregnant before I was able to finish school. Liam was born when I was 23 and my whole perspective in life changed because I learned how important money and bills were. So I got my first job as Sales Marketing Executive, I flew to California for intensive one week training completely paid for and was making more money than I ever had made in my life. But even with all the money I was not feeling happy, I did not feel like I was doing what I loved. And in my managers eye it was because I was “Too Nice”. The reason he said this it was because I did not have the heart to lie to people and cheat them into spending thousands of dollars on marketing strategies they did NOT need and that I knew was not going to bring them the results they wanted or needed just to meet a quota.

So we were back to square one and a second child on the way. I got my second job in marketing and after only 3 months in the job my world was rocked like never before. Liam was diagnosed with traces of autism and severe speech delay. And of course this news alone was enough to made me feel like I had done everything wrong. Felt like I was being punished for something I was not aware of. Now I was not upset because of his diagnoses itself, I was upset because I know how cruel the world and kids are and was terrified on how this would affect how people treated him.

My kids became my priority and money came second to me. I was lucky to be able to start my own business and have my awesome Fiance handle the bills while I took it off the ground. After a few months of not getting much success or sales, I took a step back and really made a plan. I used my knowledge and experience and combined it with my understanding of my audience and who I wanted to serve and why and it transformed my life.

But as time kept going by it wasn’t enough as people kept approaching me and asking me how I did it. I realized how much I enjoyed showing and helping other people realize the things I did. Build strategies based on their why’s and where there end goal is and helping them get there. But I wanted to do so much more, I didn’t want to offer a service I wanted to change people’s live. I didn’t want to make an income, I wanted to build a legacy.

“It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.” -Paulo Coelho